ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on, first, why have children been so understudied in hunter-gatherer research, and second, how this lacuna can be addressed. The neglect of children is even more enigmatic in hunter-gatherer studies. Ethnographers have rarely addressed them, even when "children" is a key notion in these peoples' own cultures. The analytical invisibility of children in hunter-gatherer studies is all the more striking given, as mentioned, that "children" is a key cultural notion in their own cultural discourse and imagery. The children's society is more visible when analytic attention is restricted to persons between these age limits, excluding the baby/toddler stage. The "hunter-gatherers" field of study has been no exception, as is evident for example in the 1999 Cambridge Encyclopedia of Hunters and Gatherers. For cultural anthropologists, talking about "children" and "hunter-gatherers" in the same breath is sensitive, given the intellectual historical baggage of the field.
